Opportunities

Ongoing Opportunities:

Teaching & Learning Network grants program

The Calvin Teaching and Learning Network has resources available each year to fund small projects that impact Teaching and Learning at Calvin College. The limit for these projects is $1,000. Click here for more information.

One-to-one confidential mentoring

Faculty-Student Reading Group

CTLN is sponsoring a reading group for Computer Science Department faculty and students, who will be studying and reporting to the college on Now You See It, a book on learning, digital media, and brain science.

Learning communities (2012-2013):

We are reading Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning by David I. Smith and James K.A. Smith, eds. (2011) over the course of this academic year with hopes of conceiving ways to implement Christian practice-based pedagogical experiments in our own courses. The book introduces the reader to authors who incorporated practices like hospitality, prayer, testimony, and pilgrimage into their teaching to reshape an entire course or a course unit.

We have spent several hours discussing the implications of practices helping shape Christian higher education, and thinking of ways in which particular practices might fit well within our own disciplines, teaching styles, student expectations, and courses (e.g., core vs. upper level majors). But, to date, we have only tried a few exploratory things in hopes that the summer will provide us with the time and space for planning a project for next year.

Vicki DeVries, French: I am thinking of ways that Lectio Divina might be applied to the teaching and learning of French literature. One thing I found very helpful in the Smith & Smith text was David Smith’s practice of having students read a wide variety of poetry all from the same poet throughout the semester. I have found this useful as a teaching strategy, allowing students the time and space to become more familiar with one author, more attuned to what a particular author might “say” and “how” it might be expressed. In a way, students can grow comfortable with an author’s style in a way that helps them become more charitable and expectant readers as a semester progresses.

David Leugs, CAS: I thought about including an emphasis on prayer in my Introduction to Theater core course this semester, but decided to wait for implementation because of the interim/spring semester planning crunch. This course typically utilizes small group discussions which can grow somewhat heated as students consider theater, film, funding for the arts, and other contestable topics within the various arts genres. In about the third week of the course I observed some discussions becoming intense to the point of creating animosity amongst the students. As I pondered what to do about the apparent dislike arising between certain groups of students, I decided to ask each student to choose another student in the course to pray for anonymously every day each week. Each week the students choose a new prayer focus, and I remind them each class period to keep praying for their classmates. I have no measures, but the environment in the class and the civility of the discourse has palpably improved since we began praying.

Olena Shkatulo, Spanish: It has been my desire that students know one another better so that we can build a sense of friendship and community within our learning space in Spanish 202. In some ways, I had hoped this exercise would create a sense of hospitality, in that we would become better listeners, better neighbor-classmates, and better able to share a sense of the familiar all while practicing speaking in Spanish. As a result, I have experimented this semester with having one student use the first three-five minutes of each class to introduce him/herself and tell the rest of us one thing that is important to him/her in Spanish. The assignment is meant to be stress-free in that I am not grading grammar or vocabulary. I hope that they are listening to one another, but my sense is that some take it more superficially than others, because though they are encouraged to ask questions, few actually do.

Julie Walton, Kinesiology: I teach a 300-level 4-credit exercise physiology course in the spring semester which meets 11:30-12:20 MWF plus lab. Because ExPhys was originally called Work Physiology, and because I have been long been thinking about ways to find common ground between the reasons people struggle to keep regular appointments with their exercise and prayer intentions, I wanted students to think with me about the connections. Using Ken Bain’s What the Best College Students Do, Timothy Keller’s Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, and Phyllis Tickle’s Eastertide: Prayers for Lent through Easter from The Divine Hours, I have attempted to cobble together a themed semester in which we pray together, reflect on why and when we do our best work, and how rhythm and consistency and regular attention to our intentions helps us in the times when exercise and prayer seem like plain hard work. Students wrote a paper the first week about a time in their life when they did their best work. They are keeping an exercise journal. I am encouraging them to continue in daily prayer, and we spend the first five minutes of Wednesday classes praying aloud together the midday prayers throughout Lent (it is wonderful to hear these liturgical, rhythmic prayers!). Students have prayed in small groups, together as a large group, and individually. We just finished an in-class reflection on the polarity of sloth and vainglory regarding our attitude toward work, prayer and exercise. I am struck by how many of them deeply desire their prayer lives to be so much richer, how hard they are working to make this happen, but how few of them report a satisfying result, especially as the busy-ness of the semester ramps up. Time will tell if it has been useful to thematically weave such varied aspects of one’s work, prayer and exercise life together. Stay posted!

Integrating active learning (e.g., group work) and transitioning from lecture to group work

Experimenting with multiple ways of fostering “engagement”

Using PowerPoint effectively

Applications:

Elisha: This group has taught and reinforced the idea that lecturing is not limited to professors orally communicating facts and data, but using multiple ways to encourage students to engage the content. Dedicating class time to writing reflections or small and full group discussions will help students to sort through what they understand and determine what questions remain. Additionally, multiple exposures to the concepts will increase the likelihood of future retention and recall.

Beth: As a new faculty member with very little experience in teaching I have learned the importance of structuring your lecture and class activities...before I thought it just kind of fell into place. It is hard work and takes time! It was very helpful for me to hear from experienced faculty how they developed classes. It was encouraging for me to hear about the struggles of other instructors re. lecturing and how they addressed these problems.

For my lecturing class in the fall I integrated some group activities into the class such as case studies. Also, I broke up power point slides with critical thinking questions for discussion to help the students apply the material.

Dean: I changed my organizational model for lecturing, which changes the way I prepare notes and move through a lecture. I used to move step by step to a conclusion that only I knew and controlled. I got to show off, and students appreciated going along for the ride. Now I give myself a one-page concept map—and put the map on the board before class starts. Students and I the work through relationships among the concepts and develop different routes to different conclusions about the literary works we’re studying. It puts more responsibility on students to think and work together with me, which, I hope results in better command and memory of the concepts.

On a new web-based program, students can view and listen to short video clips then record their responses. This technology makes both mechanical pattern drills and question/answer type communicative drills possible outside of the classroom.

Using wikis for lab reports (Mark Muyskens)

Replacing paper lab notebooks with wikis enables students to easily collaborate between lab groups and sections. It also facilitates grading anytime without limiting student access to revise their lab write-ups.

Using wikis for course management (Kara Sevensma)

Using wikis rather than course management tools (such as Moodle) has an advantage of preserving course structure from one semester to the next.

Adaptive technology for students with dyslexia (Jack DuMez)

A variety of apps and software are available for tablets that aid students with dyslexia in reading course materials.

When presenting a topic that the students should have familiarity with from their own lives, I first ask them to individually list what they already know about the topic and what they would like to know. I ask some questions that I tell the students cannot be answered with the information given and then ask them what further information would be needed and how they would go about finding it. For each midterm I tell my students that 80% of the exam will focus on new things but that 20% will be from old stuff.

Topics: We studied the effect of multiple testing (memory retrieval) on students’ ability to remember information and content and to transfer that knowledge to different and novel contexts. Research in cognitive science strongly demonstrates that frequent testing of students leads to better long-term learning than does an equivalent amount of studying. Our guiding question has been how to integrate frequent testing into courses we teach at Calvin.

Frequent testing has been implemented in English, Psychology, Geology, and Science Education courses.

Testing has been implemented at both the beginning and at the end of class periods.

Those able to compare student performance to past semesters have noted improved student scores.

Going forward, we wish to consider how broadly we might define testing and how we might help students learn to do more self-testing as part of their study work.